WHAT HAPPENED WHEN MY BACK WAS TURNED
Three letters for me, brought out by the pilot! One I had expected from Anthony; but my heart gave a bound as I recognized Brigit's handwriting, not seen for years; and instinct told me that the third was from Monny Gilder.
My one thought for the last two days, steaming back from the Piraeus to Alexandria, had been that I was drawing nearer to Cairo, and to those whose doings in my absence pulled at my curiosity and keyed my interest to breaking point. But if you think that I tore open those envelopes and greedily absorbed their contents the moment they were put into my hands, you have never been a conductor or even an observant passenger on a "pleasure yacht." When the letters arrived I was engaged in persuading breakfast-lingerers (they of the eggs-and-bacon habit, who ought never to leave their peaceful English homes) that it would give them more real pleasure to be first in the shore boats than last at the table. Then to get them into the boats; then to hypnotize Lady Biddell and Mrs. Harlow into the belief that they would not, could not, be seasick on the dancing waves which bobbed us up and down. No time to think of the letters; much less to feel the strangeness of fate which brought me back in such queer circumstances to the port I had entered on the Laconia eight days ago.
"As soon as we get on shore," I soothed my gnawing impatience, "I'll steal a minute somehow." But each moment was so conspicuously labelled that I could not be a thief of time—my time, which was my charges' time, bought and paid for by Sir Marcus Lark.
This was not the first occasion on which I'd heard the clanking of my chains, for, although I flattered myself that I was a popular success, popularity had penalties. On the night of the lecture I had used the passengers. Since then they had used me. Old ladies appealed to me on questions of etiquette, health or religion, and retailed my answers, not always correctly. Girls asked my advice about keeping up flirtations, and men wanted my help in getting out of them. I was expected to spout pages of Strabo or Pliny at an instant's notice; I must know why Plato went to Egypt, or how long he stayed; and be umpire between American and British bridge-players. I must be able to explain the true meaning and age of the Sphinx; invent new deck games; and show those who hadn't learned, how to dance the Tango. But with those three letters burning over my heart the duties of conductor became infuriating.
It was an awful day; for what was Pompey's Pillar to me while I remained ignorant of my friends' adventures? As I discoursed (more or less) learnedly about Diocletian, and Ptolemy's plot to drown Pompey in the Nile, something inside was asking, "Has Anthony fallen in love with Monny Gilder?" "What scrapes has that blessed girl got into?" "Has anything happened to worry Biddy?" Even that nameless but incomparable tomb on the hill of Kom esh-Shukafa could not distract my thoughts from the sealed envelopes; and three very modern handwritings came obstinately between my eyes and the matchless wall-paintings—paintings as fresh in their underground hiding-place as if finished yesterday instead of in days when it was dowdy to be pagan, fashionable to be Christian.
Corkran, as a soldier, had to guide a band to Aboukir, and chat about Nelson; point out the medieval fort of Kait Bey, and dash with hired motors to Adjemi, where Napoleon landed. Kruger took a few studious pilgrims to that unspoiled Oriental Nile town where the Rosetta Stone gave the secrets of Ancient Egypt to the world. It was mine to pilot the "frivolous lot"; to escort them in carriages round the Italian-looking city when they had absorbed its two chief sights; to give them a glimpse of the Museum, and to let them see the beauty and fashion of Alexandria driving out to San Stefano in the late afternoon. Still I had no chance to read my letters; but, thought I at the hotel, "Now at last, it has come!" Not at all! People's trunks were missing, or in the wrong rooms. It was I who had to sooth alarms, and calm rising storms. It was I who must assure Mrs. Harlow that her room was really preferable to that of Lady Biddell; and Lady Biddell that she, and not Miss Hassett-Bean, had the best in the hotel. Still, I had ten minutes to dress for dinner. Like Mr. Gladstone, I could do it in five, and have five left for my letters. But hardly had I slipped a paper knife under the flap of Monny's envelope (I should have felt a vandal to tear it) when one of the hotel managers knocked at my door. A gentleman was being very angry in the dining-room. He insisted on seeing me. He said he had been Lord Mayor of London, and ought to have a window-table. All these were previously engaged. What was to be done? Would I kindly come at once?
I persuaded Sir John that window-tables were the least desirable, owing to draughts, and returning to my room, had four minutes to dress or risk further rows. After dinner Miss Hassett-Bean burst into tears because she was alone in the world owing to the marmoset's death from seasickness; and now that she was growing old nobody cared to talk to her. I argued that people were shy because she was more important than they, and had a reputation for satire. It took half an hour for the lady's nose to go from red to pink (I think she had papier poudré in her handkerchief); and then I was obliged to walk on the beach with Miss Enid Biddell to keep Mr. Watts from proposing. As Snell relieved me from sentry duty, I was called by Kruger to discuss certain details of next morning's start for Cairo; and at midnight, when I crawled to my room a shattered wreck, the letters were still unread.
"I'm incapable of caring now," I groaned, "what has happened to any of them. If an earthquake has swallowed up our mountain, and Anthony's married Monny, and Brigit's been abducted, or vice versa, and Miss Guest has gone off with the jewels, it will leave me calm."
That was the spirit in which I tossed up a coin to see which letter to read first. Heads, Monny's; tails, Anthony's; but the penny rolled away, far under the bed where collar-buttons go, and so—I opened Biddy's. She began: